Rating: 
Summary: Much better than expected
Review: Burrell, who idolizes Princess Diana, skims over the Princess's flaws and settles scores with Prince Charles and the Spencer family. Burrell draws you into the intimate world of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, Highgrove and Kensington Palace. He does a great job of explaining Diana's life from her perspective. Too bad it all ended so sadly. I found this book surprisingly interesting and surprisingly well-written.
Rating:
Summary: Finally a peak of Diana the person
Review: I can't possibly imagine why the royal family is so upset with the publication of this book. For the first time we get to see what makes them tick as people not just royals, and considering their pampered lifestyle, Mr. Burrell believably portrays them as human and even caring. We also get a realistic feel for how little the royal family controls the grey suits who run the corporation....... This book certainly gives a more accurate description of Charles than we have ever been exposed to. ...................
Rating:
Summary: A Fine Tribute to Diana
Review: It's obvious that Paul Burrell has a great respect for the royal family and a true affection for Diana. In this well written book he gives an insiders view of royal service - the duty, the demands, and the rewards of serving those who live in a world most of us cannot even imagine. He began his career by serving the Queen in Buckingham Palace. Soon after the marriage of Charles and Diana, Burell went to work in their household. As the royal marriage deteriorated he found it difficult to serve both master and mistress and eventually became closer to Diana. He served her with loyalty and devotion. Despite the negative remarks from Prince William, this is not a salacious tell-all book. I have read many books about Diana and have seen several documentaries. There is nothing in this book that has not been mentioned in many other places, but here Diana's story is told through the eyes of someone completely devoted to her. Burrel is unapologetically a royalist. He has kind words for everyone, even the royal family that left him to twist in the wind when he was wrongly accused by Scotland Yard of stealing some of Diana's possessions. Two years later the Queen suddenly remembered that he told her he was removing some items for safekeeping and all charges were dropped. Although Burrell obviously cared about Diana this is not a fawning hagiography. It is instead an honest tribute to a compassionate yet flawed human being.
Rating: 
Summary: The fish stinks from the head
Review: Oh Burrell, Burrell. Thou quintessential ...-kissing protector of the British idiocracy. Thou hast coughed up another naughty princess tell-some, but with enough little buttons of "Oh, MY!" scattered among its pages to keep those given to such things -- me, for instance -- stuck in that slough of despond for yet another fortnight.It has always amused me that the minions (servant or otherwise), take great pains to laud the queen while lamenting the often boorish, nasty, dull-witted, classist, hilariously smug behavior of her "staff" and "counselors." Come on, Queenie, you must know by now that you're the CEO of a company full of badgers and wolverines. It seems obvious that the Big Q could stop any behaviour she wanted stopped. But nay -- or neigh -- she simply steps through the muck on her way to her latest public appearance. I daresay she must be blind, deaf or duh!
Rating:
Summary: An nice sneak peak behind the scenes
Review: I really do like this book. It is amazing how the media distorts the truth. Before reading this book I had a completely different view of the royal family. I must say I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look tremendously. Despite all the controversy surrounding this book, I must say I see nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, this book is not only a tribute to the princess, but also to other members of the royal family. Especially the queen. Wow! I find this book an important read for anyone interested in the royal family and the truth.
Rating:
Summary: FASCINATING: A BEHIND THE SCENES LOOK AT DIANA & THE ROYALS
Review: Having never read a "royal" book before I was fascinated by Paul Burrell's description of his life with, at first, the Queen, and later Diana. Though this book has been characterized as an airing of dirty laundry, I felt PB had nothing but respect for his employers and had nothing but nice things to say about the Queen. PB seemed an honorable man caught up in the circumstances of the crumbling marriage of the prince and princess. PB shows respect to Prince Charles, but does let him have it a few times by merely citing unflattering behavior. PB stays out of the action until approximately page 300 when Diana dies. Up until then he provides a birds-eye view of what goes on at Buckingham Palace and later Kensington. I found his workaday descriptions very interesting and unlike anything I had ever read before. He really seemed to love what he was doing. PB kicks into a higher gear when he is accused of stealing from the royal family and misappropriating Diana's correspondence. In many ways this was not a typical tell all and PB did not dwell on dirt. He evened a few scores by telling people what he thought of them, but never got malicious. It ended with drama in the court room when the Queen came to his aid. If it was fiction, it would never have rung true. This book is worth reading because it's not dirt and provides some fascinating background to first timers interested in the royals.
Rating: 
Summary: Scary! Both of them!
Review: I read Sally Bedell Smith's bio of Diana and thought that Smith went overboard with her insistence that Diana was mentally ill. That is, until I read Paul Burrell's book! She was impulsive, immature, jealous, vindictive, and full of self-pity. Burrell's story of Diana's attack on Tiggy was a jaw-dropper. How could you idolize anyone who acted like that? This book made me feel sorry for Charles--and I never thought I would. No wonder he turned to Camilla for some intelligent conversation. The sad thing is, this terribly deflating portrait of Diana was written by a man who adored her and thinks we will, too, after reading this book. Our idols really do have feet of clay.
Rating:
Summary: This book has the ring of truth
Review: I stayed up last night reading "A Royal Duty" by Paul Burrell. I couldn't put the book down. Learning about important events in Princess Diana's life is fascinating. Paul Burrell has written a fair, mature and historical book without the gossipy quality alot of Diana books have had. He was completely loyal and complimentary of the Queen and her husband throughout the book, and I can't understand why the Royals would be upset by this book. There were some revelations about Prince Charles' unsavory character traits, but nothing much. I really am enjoying this book and I would like to congratulate Paul for writing a well written, important account of his time with the Princess.
Rating:
Summary: Touching--and a vindication
Review: Immediately after the tragic death of the much-loved Princess of Wales, there came a plethora of books claiming to be offering the real story of the woman behind the glamourous facade. For the most part, those books seemed to be mean-spirited attempts to bash the Princess' memory while at the same time lining their authors' pockets. Virtually all of these authors appeared to hew to the theory that, since the law does not recognize slander as a legal action when the topic at hand is a deceased party, they then could engage in character assassination, so long as the same re-hashed old tales sold yet more books. In contrast, A ROYAL DUTY is the rare book which attempts to defend and explain the way in which the Princess of Wales lived her life. Thus, simply for going against the tide, it is valuable. Perhaps author Paul Burrell is slightly overwrought in his devotion to the late Princess. He's entitled to be. He dedicated his career to her. Reading between the lines, he has not yet gotten over his first glimpse of her corpse, presumably after its autopsy, a sight for which he was emotionally unprepared, and a sight from which her ex-husband and her family must have been shielded. Was Burrell in love with Diana? Probably, a little bit, in a way that defines the concept of perfect and platonic love. As such, he is her protector. He says that he wrote this book to defend Diana, to explain her side of the story to her sons, and to justify his complete lack of guilt in the witch hunt which Scotland Yard and the royal courtiers mounted against him. On all counts, he makes a compelling case and, reading this book, I came to believe him. Burrell is affronted by the way in which Prince Charles treated his young bride and Burrell makes it his business to make certain that the world (and, therefore, the couple's sons) know the truth. He also wants to be sure that there is no question but that Diana had not wanted the divorce from Charles, that she had loved Charles when she married him, and that she loved him until the day she died. Burrell explains the harshness with which Diana consistently was treated by her in-laws' advisors and counselors. He speaks highly of the Queen, his original boss, and also of the Queen's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh. He credits both of them with trying to save the Wales' marriage. He writes that Diana was grateful to each of them for the rest of her short life, remaining in frequent communication with the couple. Burrell is less tolerant, reasonably so, with the indecisive and arrogant Prince of Wales. Burrell may be even more offended by the Earl Spencer, brother of the late Princess, and by other members of the Spencer family, than he is by the Windsors. In fairness, the Spencers treated both Diana and Burrell far more shabbily than the Royals did. He cannot understand how the Earl could have offered the Princess use of a house on the family estate, to her obvious elation, and then withdrawn the offer. He cannot understand how, after the Princess made her wishes clear that her wedding dress be placed in a London museum, it has ended up on the Earl's property, in the Earl's private museum, to which he charges admission. The Spencer family, in concert with Scotland Yard, contrived to charge Burrell with stealing hundreds of the Princess' personal effects, a case that did not hold up in court. Certain truths speak for themselves... and the fact that it was the Queen herself who acknowledged Burrell's right to hold these items in safekeeping was what kept this case from being brought to a jury. She also corroborated some of his evidence, which not only was disputed by the prosecution but also was refuted and leaked to the press, those leaks presumably coming from the prosecution as well. The book is beautifully written, probably with the assistance of reporter Steve Dennis, thanked in the acknowledgments. And Paul Burrell's wife, Maria, must be a saint to have been only the second lady is his life for all of those years. Diana was not perfect, but she was a fascinating woman, kind and funny and elegant. Paul Burrell, quite literally, was Diana's loyal servant. By the end of her life, he obviously knew more about the way in which she lived than did her own mother or sisters. A ROYAL DUTY will prove to be the definitive contemporaneous record of Diana's years as the Princess of Wales.
Rating:
Summary: A reader from Richmond, Virginia
Review: I have read a number of books on the royal family, and this is one of the best. It isn't at all what I thought it would be. It is an intimate insight, without being a tell-all book. It does not reveal intimate secrets that the reader might expect, yet the reader does not feel betrayed. The day to day descriptions of the royal life such as the feeding and caring for the Queens' beloved corgis, is fascinating. And while no "dirt" on the Queen is revealed (the author even states that in all his years of service he never heard a cross word spoken between the Queen and her husband), the reader doesn't leave feeling deprived. The respectful manner in which the royal family is portrayed makes the author come across as an honest avowed royalist, not the tattling traitor that I expected.
The abuse of power which led to his arrest is disturbing, yet the author even explains why the whole mess is understandable given the class system in which he operated. Perhaps we Americans better understand how a master might befriend her servant than did the British police. On this side of the Atlantic we are not indoctrinated in the ordinary protocol between the classes. Diana certainly broke with tradition by entering the "downstairs" world on an emotional level and actually befriending those who served her. (While the author does not criticize the Queen for not attended his wedding, he mentions in passing that no royals were there except for the Queen's chaplain. Most Americans no doubt would find this remarkable, and had he been in Diana's service when he was married it would seem likely she might have attended.)
The fact that the royal family did in the end come to Burrell's defense is evidence that they understood Diana's less than traditional attitudes about befriending servants.
The book especially lends a rare peek into the mysterious person who is Queen, and leaves the reader with great awe and admiration for this remarkable woman.
| 
